Ice Tales

The hockey stories some Canadians tell

By

Stuart Weinberg

Updated Nov. 30, 2010 12:01 a.m. ET

Talk to any Canadian long enough and the subject inevitably turns to hockey. The sport is imprinted in the country's collective DNA and virtually every Canuck has at least one story about their connection to the game. Here are a few from former National Hockey League players Ron Francis and Kevin Lowe, Ottawa Senators owner Eugene Melnyk and veteran hockey writer Andrew Podnieks.

Ron Francis

Journal Report

A Hockey Hall-of-Famer, Ron Francis played the bulk of his career in the U.S. with the Carolina Hurricanes, Pittsburgh Penguins and the long-defunct Hartford Whalers. At the tail-end of his career, he was traded to the Toronto Maple Leafs to provide scoring depth and veteran leadership ahead of the 2003-2004 playoffs. While Mr. Francis knew hockey players in Toronto were put on pedestals and subject to intense scrutiny, he began to appreciate just what that meant on the flight in from Carolina to join the Leafs.

"The day I got traded," he says, "I jumped on a flight that afternoon and, as in any regular flight, you're coming in and the pilot kind of gives you the update when you're 15 minutes out. He gave the temperature in Toronto, and so on and so forth, and he finishes his remarks by saying, 'Let me be the first to welcome Ron Francis to Toronto to help us win the [Stanley] Cup.' And now I see people on the plane starting to rotate their heads around and I just buried my head in my book."

When the plane landed, Mr. Francis says he was about eight deep in the line to disembark when the plane door opened and the police and immigration people came in and said, "Which one is Francis?"

"I sort of put my hand up, and they say, 'All right, you come with us,'" he continues. "You're sitting there doing the customs stuff, pointing to which bags are yours and they're not taking you out the normal exit of the airport because there are going to be too many reporters there. And you're going out a different exit and taking a specially arranged car and [the driver] says, 'I got him.' And at that point I said [to myself], 'What did I get myself into?'"

Kevin Lowe

Best known for his years with the brilliant Edmonton Oilers teams of the early-to-mid 1980s that featured Wayne Gretzky, Mark Messier and Paul Coffey, Kevin Lowe is now president of hockey operations for the Oilers. He has also helped assemble several Canadian Olympic hockey teams, including the 2010 squad.

Mr. Lowe shares a story that underscores the relief Canadians, and the men who put together the men's team, felt after the team won Olympic gold.

"The level of scrutiny that surrounded the selection of Canada's Olympic hockey team, and then during the tournament itself, was almost comical," he says. "The best story that describes the pressure on Stevie [Steve Yzerman, the team's executive director] occurred after we won the gold medal and were leaving Canada Hockey Place. We were walking over to meet our families after leaving the dressing room. Fans were lining the streets. We were in a secure area, but fans could see us walking, and someone yelled, 'Stevie, pressure's off.' And we kind of looked back and said, 'Yeah, no kidding, no kidding.'"

Mr. Lowe, who was raised in Lachute, Quebec, about 45 minutes northwest of Montreal, grew up a Montreal Canadiens fan. But he still remembers getting Detroit Red Wings great Gordie Howe's autograph. Mr. Howe was playing an exhibition game in nearby St. Jerome, Quebec, and Mr. Lowe, who was 5 at the time, managed to sneak behind the Red Wings bench, tug on Mr. Howe's jersey—while the game was on—and get an autograph.

"That would be unheard of nowadays," Mr. Lowe says, noting that team benches are encased in Plexiglass and inaccessible to the fans.

As a player, Mr. Lowe says, he and his Oilers teammates "had a saying in our dressing room for a lot of years. It was a quote from [Montreal Canadiens' legend] Jean Beliveau. I can't remember it verbatim, but it went something along the lines of, 'With one stroke of the pen, if I can bring happiness to one person, why wouldn't I take the time to do it?'"

Andrew Podnieks

A prolific hockey writer, Andrew Podnieks, 48, has written more than 55 books about hockey. As a child, he went to Toronto Maple Leafs games with the daughter of former Maple Leafs great Irvine "Ace" Bailey. Mr. Bailey retired after nearly being killed during a game in 1933 when he was hit from behind by Eddie Shore of the Boston Bruins. After retiring, Mr. Bailey worked at Maple Leaf Gardens as a penalty timekeeper and off-ice official.

"When Bailey's career ended, Toronto Maple Leafs' owner Conn Smythe gave him two season tickets for the rest of his life," Mr. Podnieks says. "His daughter Joyce wound up using them for decades. Joyce was a nurse who worked with my mom, also a nurse, and when she offered to take me to a game, my mom said yes.

"In the intermission, we went to see Ace. He slipped a puck in my hand and said, 'Don't tell anybody.' And I was terrified and I told him, 'I won't. I promise.'"

Mr. Podnieks says he was about 9 at the time and went to several more games with Joyce, receiving a puck from Ace every time. To this day, when he plays hockey, he wears Mr. Bailey's No. 6 in his honor.

Eugene Melnyk

A billionaire who made his money in the pharmaceuticals industry, Eugene Melnyk bought the cash-strapped Ottawa Senators during the 2003-2004 season. As a child, he played hockey in his family's backyard rink in Toronto.

"I was on skates from probably the age of 4," he says. "We lived in a middle-class neighborhood. We had a big back yard, and back then, before global warming, it would start freezing by mid December. My dad would go out and put a couple of concrete blocks on a shovel, flatten out the snow and then he would take the hose out and start making ice for us. He put out a couple of floodlights and bought a couple of cheap hockey nets from Canadian Tire, and we would be waiting form him to finish.

"We would be out on that ice on weekends from 8 in the morning til 7 at night. Then we'd be called in for dinner and scream for 15 minutes because our circulation was slowed to our feet. Then we'd get ready for Hockey Night in Canada at 8, and that would be every Saturday."

Mr. Melnyk can still tell you the score of every game when the Boston Bruins blew out the Maple Leafs in the 1968-1969 playoffs four games to none. But these days he focuses his passion on his Ottawa Senators.

"I feel there's a huge responsibility to not embarrass Canadians, to at least be competitive," he says. "I plan my flights around [Senators] games. There's no way I would be traveling during a Sens gam. I'm somewhere in front of a TV and my computer is set up to get it live. It doesn't matter where I am, as long as there's Internet."

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